Does anyone else have their game plan heavily involving the RB in the passing game?

I changed my gameplan to 5% very short, 5% short . and set my RB routes in formations to 0's across the board for Medium, long and deep. Yet somewhow every game my RB is still the most heavily targeted players.

And in your playbooks, what percentages do you have for each of the distances?

In a pass play, who the ball is thrown to depends on two things: who is targeted at a given distance in a formation, and where the ball is being thrown to for a given down/distance in the playbook.

In a formation, the numbers designate the percentages that a given player/position will be targeted by the QB. If you have your RBs at 5% for Very Short and Short, the TE is set to block, but the WRs are at 0, then your RBs will be the ones thrown to.

In a playbook, the numbers are the percentage chance that a pass will be thrown to a given distance - Very Short to Deep.

I understand all of that. I choose to throws short and very shorts 5% each. So 90% of the time it should throw med to deep. My wr are the only ones who go long or deep. While I set my TE to medium with receivers evenly split going medium also. RBs are 0 for medium long and deep

i suggest a TEST. Just stop all very short and short throws. See what happens then. I believe there is too much "checkdown" from the DBs. The defenses are a bit "too good" at deep and medium coverage. Its too difficult to get your stud WR open deep, therefore driving more checkdowns and RB safety valve passes.

Posted by harriswb3 on 11/25/2013 11:09:00 AM (view original):i suggest a TEST. Just stop all very short and short throws. See what happens then. I believe there is too much "checkdown" from the WBs. The defenses are a bit "too good" at deep and medium coverage. Its too difficult to get your stud WR open deep, therefore driving more checkdowns and RB safety valve passes.

The weird thing is that I did an absolute test, a statistical analysis of my targets compared to my set up gameplan/formations. they were spot on over the year. No evidence of anything strange like other people are seeing. I wonder why. I'd love to figure it out, but I can't test games because we are not in beta! We should still be in beta.

Posted by noah23 on 11/25/2013 12:33:00 PM (view original):The weird thing is that I did an absolute test, a statistical analysis of my targets compared to my set up gameplan/formations. they were spot on over the year. No evidence of anything strange like other people are seeing. I wonder why. I'd love to figure it out, but I can't test games because we are not in beta! We should still be in beta.

The Test Game option is still available under your beta team (I just checked). You'd have to use your beta team as is (SRs have graduated and there was no recruiting), but you should be able to get an idea of what's going on.

Posted by noah23 on 11/25/2013 12:33:00 PM (view original):The weird thing is that I did an absolute test, a statistical analysis of my targets compared to my set up gameplan/formations. they were spot on over the year. No evidence of anything strange like other people are seeing. I wonder why. I'd love to figure it out, but I can't test games because we are not in beta! We should still be in beta.

The Test Game option is still available under your beta team (I just checked). You'd have to use your beta team as is (SRs have graduated and there was no recruiting), but you should be able to get an idea of what's going on.

The engine that is run in beta is not the same as what is in the live version now.

If nothing has changed from the end of the beta to now, putting 0 in vs/s will mean zero passes to short or very short routes. Zero. simulated near a hundred games trying to see one checkdown. There was not a single one.

Posted by harriswb3 on 11/25/2013 11:48:00 AM (view original):i suggest a TEST. Just stop all very short and short throws. See what happens then. I believe there is too much "checkdown" from the DBs. The defenses are a bit "too good" at deep and medium coverage. Its too difficult to get your stud WR open deep, therefore driving more checkdowns and RB safety valve passes.

This^^

Wasn't an issue in Beta. Now it is. Something changed. WHile RBs were heavily involved in the passing game in Beta, WRs were equally useful. It provided a good balance if you could catch the defense trying to stop one or the other (or playing medium to attempt to help out in both cases assuming what Norbert told us about coverage is still applicable). I know passing was out of control in Beta, but by the final season it seemed somewhat realistic. I still relied heavily on the long passing game to set up my screens and runs. Now here in the official 3.0, I really struggled to get the ball to my WRs this season, and I had pretty good recievers for div 3. My qb always checked down even in 1 on 1 coverage where my WRs were more talented than the players covering them.

Pretty decent threesome. Most of the coaches I played did not have a strong enough secondary to cover all three, yet they managed to do just that. None of the above players have very high formation IQs, but I was under the impression formation IQ was about penalties and turnovers which should not impact getting open.

Sorry to highjack the thread but like I said, I agree with Harris and think checking down excessively is part of the problem. Noah may be right in that you can eliminate the checkdowns by eliminating short and very short passes, but my guess if the QB will get sacked or run for it. Without a test feature it is hard to say if he will continue looking fo an open reciever once he has gone through his reads with no outlet reciever available. Hopefully oriole can shed some light on this issue.